Fewer T&D Cuts, But HR Still Cautious on Economic Recovery
The good news for Training and Development professionals is that the latest annual Corporate Issues Survey by The Ken Blanchard Companies suggests the majority of companies are spending the same or more on T&D initiatives than they did last year. The bad news is very few businesses believe the economy is going to recover any time soon.
Last year, Blanchard's survey showed a surprising optimism that the downturn would not last long - only 25% of the executives, line managers, HR and T&D professionals surveyed worldwide thought it would continue unabated into 2010. Now the first quarter of 2010 is over, only 5% of the 1886 people taking this year's survey feel very optimistic about recovery. 30% are cautious about recovery, and the rest only mildly or fairly optimistic.
However, 40% of those responding to the survey said there would be no cuts to T&D budgets, and 32% said they would be spending more than in 2009. Jim O'Brien, Managing Director of The Ken Blanchard Companies EMEA says the survey findings suggest that the message put out by the T&D world since the start of the downturn - that a recession is possibly the worst time to be cutting training budgets - has hit home: -
"When organisations need to do more with less and hold on to their best people, they have to think about how engaged those people are, who can step up to the plate should they leave, and whether they will have the leadership competence in place when the economy does bounce back," he says. "Because we've worked to tie our training and development programmes even closer to the real-time pressures faced by organisations we work with, we've still been delivering outstanding returns on investment and seeing a clear impact on our clients' bottom lines despite the economic climate."
Since 2003, over 8000 leaders have participated in Blanchard's ongoing study, which asks participants to rank order their top organisational, business and management challenges.
Competitive pressure has been the top concern every year since Blanchard's survey began eight years ago, except in 2009, when economic pressure was rated higher. Today it is back at the top of the list, with the need for growth and expansion coming second and third - again, a usual trend. A more significant finding is an increase in awareness of the need to be environmentally responsible - more than twice as many leaders are taking the issue seriously now, with statistics shooting up from 10% in 2009 to 23% this year. There is also more concern around pricing sensitivity and the need for innovation.
In EMEA and Latin America, the top business challenge was again competitive pressure, while in the USA and Canada economic challenges were still of greatest concern. In APAC growth and expansion is the highest priority.
Creating an engaged workforce seems set to become the year-on-year top management challenge, with a newly-added category of performance management coming a close second. The need to reduce costs dropped by 9 percentage points - an early indication perhaps that companies have made as many cutbacks as they feel able to already?
Drilling down into management challenges, developing leaders who excel at both strategic and tactical roles is paramount for 40% of organisations. 58% are aware of a need to develop employees in managerial/supervisory skills, and the top HR challenge is to 'do more with less.'
For a copy of the Blanchard survey email [email protected]